Wanting to Be Right

When divorce shows it’s gloomy, depressing face on the doorstep of your life, it’s difficult to say "Oh goodie, goodie! An opportunity to grow!" No, when we enter into divorce, it’s pretty generally happening at the end of a long history of mistakes, angry words, sorrowful sobbing into one’s pillow, hugging of children, complaining to friends, hiding it from parents, and wanting to admonish God. It’s not a happy place at all.

One of the things that give us a boost through these emotionally stressful times is that we think that we are right; we think that ‘my horrible other spouse’ was most wrong. It gives us comfort to be right and make the other one wrong. It’s at least something that is satisfying as we fight our way out of one life and terrifyingly enter into another one, one we did not bargain for, and one we certainly would never consciously choose.

"Being Right" can be an individual comfort. It can also be an impediment to further progress. It can create a burden in our children if we mistakenly share how right we are and how wrong their other parent is with them. Please don’t do that to your kids.

You need to decide if being right is a comfort to you alone, or if you’ve used it to halt any further progress. You can easily do that by honestly answering some questions, and remember, only you will know the answers.

Was he/she the only one who did things to cause this divorce?

If I didn’t do anything actively to cause it, did my passive lack of action cause it?

Did I permit behaviors or actions against me that made me less than who I know myself to be?

Did I actively step out of my commitment to my spouse and make this divorce happen?

Did I ask too few questions before we married?

What questions should I have asked that I did not?

In what ways AM I really right?

In what ways am I really wrong?

I don’t believe any of us is blameless in a divorce. Each of us has done things and NOT done things which caused the rupture in our marriages and emotionally stressful experiences. I also believe that if we are honest within ourselves, we can prevent the second divorce (and statistics say the rate of second divorces is even higher than the first) from crushing us the way this first one is. Preventing that second divorce is what we are all about at WisdomforDivorcedParents.com.